hi all! do you guys know a way to export a cr2's skeleton? those triangle-shaped thingies, y'know... tia A.

The only way to export a figure skeleton for use in other 3D applications is by using BVH.  It is neither fool-proof nor does it consider the most important factor - weighting!!!!!  Poser weighting is based upon a tri-axial system (weights are split among the coordinate axes - XYZ in the specified rotation order) with the twistbar, joint angles, and inclusive spherical falloff zones where applicable.  This weighting is not accessible nor is it supported by other applications.  So, you'll get the rudimentary bones with BVH export, but the weighting is another matter altogether.

What are your intentions?

DAZ|Studio's FiLMBOX FBX exporter should, in theory, allow you to export a Poser's character's rigging and weightmaps.  Not sure how effective it is, though.

oh, wow, no, guys...this is going way too far! my fault! sorry! i should have told you exactly what i want.... i want to export them as .obj, as a modelling help, simply that... once more, sorry for the misunderstanding. A.

I'm not certain that there is any way to export them as geometry.  They're there mainly as a visual aid for the setup room.

the mannequin might serve as a visual aid, if one replaced all its body parts with appropriate triangle things.

manneqin won't help in this case, i'm afraid. it's about modelling a technical thingie with lots of moving parts and chrome, and for this the somewhere-in-space boneing in the setup room is not good enough. now my idea is to assemble a couple of primitives representing the bodyparts, bone them (!), export the bones and do the modelling according to this skeleton. well, i know how to hack'n'slay my way through a cr2, but doing it the p4-way - i.e. actually writing 15 (maybe 17) bones is not exactly what i want to spend my time for. sigh! A.

There's no way to export the rig as actual geometry. Sorry.  You can make an approximation of the rig and export that but it won't, itself, be a working Poser rig. Even BodyStudio, our plugin to get from Poser to Max, Maya and C4D doesn't export the actual bones. It's simply not possible with the current version of Poser. Who knows what the future will hold though?

-T

PS. When last I looked BVH only exported the animation, not the rig. I may need to check that again, it doesn't come up much in tech support....

Here's a workflow I use in C4D. I export the figure from Poser as object I import in C4D with the most excellent Interposer ltd (Not Interposer pro for this) I export a bvh from poser and then "merge" it in C4D. I then scale the bvh to the figure if needed and then fix the squeleton to the object. Next step is to export the file as fbx. Delete the original imported figure from the scene. Import the previously exported fbx What you get is a rigged and weighed (claude bonet) figure with all textures in the right places. Hope that helps Jean-Luc PS: Interposer ltd and Interposer Pro are the best plugins ever for import from poser into C4D thanks to kuroyume0161

oh my, thank you, hawk999, for taking the trouble of writing this tut. bad thing is, my modeller (amapi) is unable to deal with bhv and fbx. apart from that it seems to me as if geometries exported from poser figures cannot be trusted... i think i'll go the smartparent way. since there are no bending parts this will be the easiest way. with a couple of remote controls it should do. i just don't really like it to have tons of props hangin' around. it's so 'unprofessional' - (muaha! biiig words!!!) and as for "Who knows what the future will hold though?" i rather have them add a snap-to function for the setup-room, imo that would be the best of all worlds! A.

I'll pass it on to the boss.

Quote - PS. When last I looked BVH only exported the animation, not the rig. I may need to check that again, it doesn't come up much in tech support....

Oh, it does, as a rudimentary skeletal hierarchy.  It only shows the origins (you need to use the next bone to get the endpoint/length of the bone in a sense) and the rotation order, but that information is enough to construct the bone rig.  Thus the reason you get a bone hierarchy in C4D (for instance) when you import a BVH. :)

But no weighting, as mentioned.

Now, bones as displayed are using something for display.  In my plugin, I actually use geometry (vertices and polygons) to 'draw' my plugin bones into the View display.  So, if there was a need to do so, it would be a simple matter to create real geometry for the bones using the same routines and geometry as starting point.  Is it not possible to do something similar with Poser Python?  Heck, I'll even throw in the Wavefront obj file - for free - buy now, get a second one for only $19.95! ;)

:)  Thanks for that. There are some aspects to the program I just don't ever have to get into for work and I enjoy the moments like this when I'm given the chance to look into it more. Usually it's the same 5 or 6 questions gazillions of times over.  I'm still hoping we'll implement a more robust rig creation system in the future. Maybe something to help simulate muscle movement a bit better...doesn't have to be a full muscle system, maybe a more automated one like Walk Designer or Talk Designer...only this time it'd be Muscle Designer. It'd probably not work on non-standard figures though (like arachnid humanoid turtle dragon hybrids).  Anyway, carry on. I'm starting to babble.